This is the greatest vampire novel ever written. Forget Stoker, ignore Rice, this is it. Why? Because the vampires herein are not your friends. They are not your lovers. There is nothing remotely lovable about Barlow's children of the night. They simply want to fucking drain you.

Like many people, my first experience with 'Salem's Lot had to do with Tobe Hooper's amazing made-for-television adaptation. The mute Nosferatu-like Barlow of Hooper's version is nothing like the mustachioed Dracula-esque Barlow of King's book. Some even find Hooper's version of Barlow to be scarier for that reason. No words. No nonsense. Just one scary motherfucker. I remain on the fence. The Barlow of the book is cold and cunning and terrifying, but Hooper's vision can freeze the blood on site. Which is scarier? I don't know, but why can't they both be equally horrifying?

My only complaint about this book is the beginning. Even after two reads, I still cannot find a purpose for the prologue. It's one major fucking spoiler and I don't like it. But that's it. Ignore the prologue and this book is perfect.

Notable character:Chopper (It's not the same dog, but another canine with the name Chopper pops up in The Body)Gendron (various King books. Thanks to RedTHaws for doing the research on this one.)Father Donald Callahan (the final three books of the Dark Tower series)

In summation: A lot of people will disagree with my opening statement, but I don't care. I have not found a more frightening vampire tale, but I must admit, I stopped looking. If you would like to suggest vampire novels that you think are scarier, go ahead, but know that I have read all about Rice's slumberfests, Stoker's diaries, and McCammon's bloodsuckers. The only tale that even comes close to this is the 30 Day's of Night graphic novels. King's vamps have the bite I require, what more can I say?( )

I avoided this for a long time because I just do not care about vampires, but actually it's a perfectly adequate vampire novel - which sounds like damning with faint praise, but most vampire novels are actively terrible, so really that's pretty good. ( )

I t scared me so much as a teen/child that I had to rush out and buy a cruifix before finishing the book.That is what a horror book is meant to do. I have no intention of reading it again, do not wish to spoil that memory.

Wikipedia in English (1)

The town knew darkness...and the awful, heavy silence of terrifying images grotesquely dancing in and out of the shadows...and stark white faces, huge empty eyes and long gnarled hands that reached out with lustful insistence...and the paralyzing fear of a diabolical corruption and a hideoous peril more dreadful than death. But no one living in Salem's Lot dared talk about the high, sweet, evil laughter of a child...and the sucking sounds... (0-451-12545-2)

Stephen King's second book, 'Salem's Lot (1975)--about the slow takeover of an insular hamlet called Jerusalem's Lot by a vampire patterned after Bram Stoker's Dracula--has two elements that he also uses to good effect in later novels: a small American town, usually in Maine, where people are disconnected from each other, quietly nursing their potential for evil; and a mixed bag of rational, goodhearted people, including a writer, who band together to fight that evil.

Simply taken as a contemporary vampire novel, 'Salem's Lot is great fun to read, and has been very influential in the horror genre. But it's also a sly piece of social commentary. As King said in 1983, "In 'Salem's Lot, the thing that really scared me was not vampires, but the town in the daytime, the town that was empty, knowing that there were things in closets, that there were people tucked under beds, under the concrete pilings of all those trailers. And all the time I was writing that, the Watergate hearings were pouring out of the TV.... Howard Baker kept asking, 'What I want to know is, what did you know and when did you know it?' That line haunts me, it stays in my mind.... During that time I was thinking about secrets, things that have been hidden and were being dragged out into the light." Sounds quite a bit like the idea behind his 1998 novel of a Maine hamlet haunted by unsightly secrets, Bag of Bones. --Fiona Webster

Stephen King's second novel, Salem's Lot, is the story of a mundane town under siege from the forces of darkness. Considered one of the most terrifying vampire novels ever written, it cunningly probes the shadows of the human heart, and the insular evils of small-town America.… (more)